Bodily labour is of two kinds: either that which a man (15)
submits to for his livelihood, or that which he undergoes
for his pleasure. The latter of them generally changes
the name of labour for that of exercise, but differs only
from ordinary labour as it rises from another motive.
A country life abounds in both these kinds of labour,
and for that reason gives a man a greater stock of health,
and consequently a more perfect enjoyment of himself,
than any other way of life. I consider the body as a system
of tubes and glands, or, to use a more rustic phrase, (117: 5)
a bundle of pipes and strainers, fitted to one another after
so wonderful a manner as to make a proper engine for
the soul to work with. This description does not only
comprehend the bowels, bones, tendons, veins, nerves,
and arteries, but every muscle and every ligature, which (10)
is a composition of fibres that are so many imperceptible
tubes or pipes, interwoven on all sides with invisible
glands or strainers.
This general idea of a human body, without considering
it in its niceties of anatomy, lets us see how absolutely (15)
necessary labour is for the right preservation of it. There
must be frequent motions and agitations, to mix, digest, and
separate the juices contained in it, as well as to clear and
cleanse that infinitude of pipes and strainers of which it is
composed, and to give their solid parts a more firm and (20)
lasting tone. Labour or exercise ferments the humours,
casts them into their proper channels, throws off redundancies,
and helps nature in those secret distributions
without which the body cannot subsist in its vigour, nor
the soul act with cheerfulness. (25)
I might here mention the effects which this has upon
all the faculties of the mind, by keeping the understanding
clear, the imagination untroubled, and refining those
spirits that are necessary for the proper exertion of our
intellectual faculties during the present laws of union between
soul and body. It is to a neglect in this particular
that we must ascribe the spleen which is so frequent in
men of studious and sedentary tempers, as well as the vapours
to which those of the other sex are so often subject. (118: 5)
Had not exercise been absolutely necessary for our
well-being, nature would not have made the body so
proper for it, by giving such an activity to the limbs and
such a pliancy to every part as necessarily produce those
compressions, extensions, contortions, dilatations, and all (10)
other kinds of motions that are necessary for the preservation
of such a system of tubes and glands as has been
before mentioned. And that we might not want inducements
to engage us in such an exercise of the body as is
proper for its welfare, it is so ordered that nothing valuable (15)
can be procured without it. Not to mention riches
and honour, even food and raiment are not to be come at
without the toil of the hands and sweat of the brows.
Providence furnishes materials, but expects that we should
work them up ourselves. The earth must be laboured (20)
before it gives its increase; and when it is forced into its
several products, how many hands must they pass through
before they are fit for use! Manufactures, trade, and
agriculture naturally employ more than nineteen parts
of the species in twenty; and as for those who are not (25)
obliged to labour, by the condition in which they are
born, they are more miserable than the rest of mankind
unless they indulge themselves in that voluntary labour
which goes by the name of exercise.
My friend Sir Roger has been an indefatigable man in
business of this kind, and has hung several parts of his
house with the trophies of his former labours. The walls
of his great hall are covered with the horns of several
kinds of deer that he has killed in the chase, which he (119: 5)
thinks the most valuable furniture of his house, as they
afford him frequent topics of discourse, and show that
he has not been idle. At the lower end of the hall is
a large otter's skin stuffed with hay, which his mother
ordered to be hung up in that manner, and the knight (10)
looks upon it with great satisfaction, because it seems he
was but nine years old when his dog killed him.[78] A little
room adjoining to the hall is a kind of arsenal filled with
guns of several sizes and inventions, with which the
knight has made great havoc in the woods, and destroyed (15)
many thousands of pheasants, partridges, and woodcocks.
His stable doors are patched with noses that belonged
to foxes of the knight's own hunting down. Sir Roger
showed me one of them, that for distinction sake has a
brass nail struck through it, which cost him about fifteen (20)
hours' riding, carried him through half a dozen counties,
killed him a brace of geldings, and lost above half his
dogs. This the knight looks upon as one of the greatest
exploits of his life. The perverse widow, whom I have
given some account of, was the death of several foxes; (25)
for Sir Roger has told me that in the course of his amours
he patched the western door of his stable. Whenever
the widow was cruel, the foxes were sure to pay for it.
In proportion as his passion for the widow abated and
old age came on, he left off fox-hunting; but a hare is
not yet safe that sits within ten miles of his house.
[78] The otter or Sir Roger? Recast the sentence.
There is no kind of exercise which I would so recommend
to my readers of both sexes as this of riding, as (120: 5)
there is none which so much conduces to health, and is
every way accommodated to the body, according to the
idea which I have given of it. Dr. Sydenham is very
lavish in its praises; and if the English reader will see
the mechanical effects of it described at length, he may (10)
find them in a book published not many years since,
under the title of the _Medicina Gymnastica_.
For my own part, when I am in town, for want of these
opportunities I exercise myself an hour every morning
upon a dumb-bell that is placed in a corner of my room, (15)
and pleases me the more because it does everything I
require of it in the most profound silence. My landlady
and her daughters are so well acquainted with my hours
of exercise, that they never come into my room to disturb
me whilst I am ringing. (20)
When I was some years younger than I am at present,
I used to employ myself in a more laborious diversion,
which I learned from a Latin treatise of exercises that
is written with great erudition. It is there called the
[Greek: skiomachia], or the fighting with a man's own shadow, and (25)
consists in the brandishing of two short sticks grasped in
each hand, and loaden with plugs of lead at either end.
This opens the chest, exercises the limbs, and gives a man
all the pleasure of boxing, without the blows. I could
wish that several learned men would lay out that time
which they employ in controversies and disputes about
nothing, in this method of fighting with their own shadows.
It might conduce very much to evaporate the spleen,
which makes them uneasy[79] to the public as well as to (121: 5)
themselves.
[79] Disagreeable.
To conclude, as I am a compound of soul and body, I
consider myself as obliged to a double scheme of duties,
and think I have not fulfilled the business of the day
when I do not thus employ the one in labour and exercise, (10)
as well as the other in study and contemplation. L.